Hurricaniacs

This video will go into the history of North Carolina Hockey and the foundation Raleigh paved to build the Carolina Hurricanes. It will also cover track and field results and whether the team had met the hype or not. CONGRATS ON THE STANLEY CUP!!!!!!

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Creators and Guests

Host

Logan Brumley

What is In The Den?

"In The Den" with host Logan Brumley covers everything from the NC State Wolfpack's NCAA, intramural and club sports. "In The Den" is a podcast from WKNC 88.1 FM HD-1/HD-2 at NC State University.

Hurricaniacs.mp3
Meeting created at: 15th Jun, 2026 - 9:55 AM

00:00
Logan Brumley
Hello and welcome to WKNC official sports podcast In The Den. So, we have officially finished the NHL season. The Stanley cup belongs to the Carolina Hurricanes, the first time in 20 years. I'm sure you've got your celebrations going on. They lit the tower red. But I decided that for today's episode, I'm going to do a little bit of historical, semi deep dive into the history of the Carolina Hurricanes, or at least just how they managed to come to North Carolina, because this is a pretty interesting journey that not a lot of the states didn't take. I mean, it was really hard to develop hockey in the south, and North Carolina has a very tribalist history revolving around that.

00:58
Logan Brumley
And then I'll also go over just a little bit of news, just in general of NC State athletics, especially revolving around track and field, since that just finished up. Anyways, let's get headphones on. Let's get straight to it. Well, the Carolina Hurricanes don't really need an introduction. They have been able to settle into North Carolina. Why not become one of the biggest sports in the state, especially here in the city of Raleigh? I mean, y' all live in Raleigh for the most part, and it's just become a huge part of NC State culture to follow the Carolina Hurricanes, especially in the past few years when they have been breaking our hearts in the postseason. And now as they raise the Stanley cup, it's great to look back and just see how it all came to be.

01:56
Logan Brumley
Because, I mean, as you can probably assume with hockey's foundation and being more of a Yankee sport, you know, being found by Canadian people and Canadian immigrants in Northeastern America, it was really something that was accessible to southern part of the US for a good about like 80 years into its creation. It started in the late 1800s, and the NHL, I think, only really started in like the early 1900s. And most of what we're going to be talking about is mid to late 1900s, just as like a frame of reference. But North Carolina getting a hockey team is almost 40 years in the making. If we look back into the 70s where minor league hockey was almost nationwide because it was just such a profitable method.

02:52
Logan Brumley
I mean, it's hard to maintain an ice rink, but, you know, being able to throw a couple of players onto the ice and get people to watch it can turn a steady profit. That's something that North Carolina had learned and was trying to pick up on. See, even though, like, the only real taste of hockey as we start to get into this was just 1960, the Olympics in California it was one of two hockey, you know, America hockey's gold medals at the time when they were seen as huge underdogs to like the Soviet Union or some Scandinavian countries, and. Canada. So definitely took its time to settle its roots. And our first instance in 1956. So a couple years earlier, but not as major as the Olympics were, was this Eastern Hockey League - minor league team - the Baltimore Clippers.

04:02
Logan Brumley
They had their arena burned down and needed a new home. A group of Charlotte businessmen, which I cannot find the name offered the recently founded Charlotte Coliseum as a temporary site. But what they didn't accept was probably like a really high turnover. There were almost 40,000 fans in six games when the Clippers were struggling to even get 2,000 fans at that time. I think that's probably why Baltimore doesn't have an NHL team. I mean there's just like some ones where it's like these are major cities. Why don't they have sports teams like Pittsburgh with the NBA is the biggest one that comes to my head. And this is mostly why. Just seems like earlier attempts where it just went so catastrophically that it really hurt their potential. May not be a huge reason, but it's definitely part of it.

04:59
Logan Brumley
And that's what led to a more permanent relocation and a team name change that led to the creation of the first iteration of the Charlotte Checkers. The other notable team in this early period was in Greensboro. You'll see Greensboro come up a lot in this category, especially since they just founded the Greensboro Coliseum. And the only professional sports league at that time was the Carolina League with the Greensboro Yankees. It felt pretty easy to put a hockey team in there because you know, it's going to be hard to compete with the Carolina League in that spring summer season. And it's probably going to be even harder to Compete with Duke, UNC NC State during the basketball season in the winter seasons. So they were able to take a struggling team in Troy, Ohio and brought it over to Greensboro.

06:13
Logan Brumley
The help of owner and future mayor Carson Bain. In tandem, the two teams had a lot of success in both regular season attendance and postseason success. They both had their own championships, the Checkers having three and just we're, you know, in the higher echelons of attendance through most of their time with the EHL and you know, eventually like as you see most of these hockey teams, it's kind of like the luster of having it for those first few years is really successful and then with time it starts to dwindle away a little bit like attended starts to go away. Some of the hype and some of the allure of a new sport and a new team in that sport goes away. And that's, I believe this is the biggest theory of that I have of what happened with the Greensboro.

07:20
Logan Brumley
I don't have - they're the Greensboro Generals, [that's their] name - and then the Charlotte Checkers is that they just both weren't really able to keep up and were disbanded in the late 1970s. You know, but it's a proof of concept at this time of, you know, maybe minor league hockey can have a home in North Carolina. And I think this is something where if we didn't have this, we wouldn't be able to get to the next step. And it was something that fit very few southern United States teams outside of California were capable of doing. I can't think of any other southern US teams that had this level of success, at least in a minor league level. And this was around a time when major league development was starting to grow in hype as well.

08:19
Logan Brumley
You know, the World Hockey association, which is one of the biggest, I think rivalry leagues in history because with all these major sports leagues there's an era where they have a major rival that is able to take a lot of fans and is therefore able to create their own success from that. And, and that is especially true with the World Hockey association who were trying to soak up talent. They were introducing like sub 20-year-old draftees. They were introducing European talent which at the time was very foreign concept to take in different countries of athletes and try to win with them. A lot of the owners were kind of sticking to U.S. or Canadian athletes and a way of trying to maintain profitability and finance, you know, their riskier endeavors, was trying to find a, you know, some new markets to explore.

09:32
Logan Brumley
And one of those was Houston with the Houston Aeros named after some of the airplanes are going over town. Houston and Los Angeles especially were the huge sports market in the south and were great choices to settle in. We'll talk more about the Aeros. You know, they had Gordie Howe. They were a team that did have some inconsistency but were able to relatively be listed as like, you know, one of the top five teams in viewership attendance. Especially with how they did have at least one. They had two championships. Okay, not just one, they had two and their six-year duration. However, you know, they were kind of started to lose their charm. They folded in 1977. They weren't part of the WHA-NHL merger.

10:32
Logan Brumley
And while it was again another kind of proof of concept on a major level that maybe pro hockey could work in the South. And I think that combination of these small little pop ups in the south that were able to maintain some success and then just trying to take what was good from the World Hockey association tried to put it into their league to guess try to prevent another sort of major competitor like that. There was definitely some exploration of major league hockey teams in the south, particularly with the Atlanta Flames which if you do not, I'm sure you probably don't remember it like you were there. But the Flames that were one of the short-lived pro hockey teams in the very south, it was a huge disaster. They went to Calgary and are now Calgary Flames.

11:33
Logan Brumley
And sort of the same thing happened in Kansas City with the Kansas City Scouts who are now the New Jersey Devils. So, there were some failures, there were some short-term success and just general growth in the American population, culture, economy, all of that where maybe hockey could again find its way. But there was again a needed proof concept. Again, this isn't just like the 50s and 60s anymore. We're trying to look into. You know, what are you doing first right now because a lot of these pro sports leagues are sort of in that similar kind of area with trying to especially to figure out teams to expand to in different locations. And this comes off just a arena in Raleigh called the Dorton Arena.

12:39
Logan Brumley
You know the home state fair very much a very huge focal point of Raleigh's history especially when it comes to cultural expression. And you know, sports is a big part of culture. The Carolina Cougars were there for five years as a pro basketball team. I think that was in the basketball NBA version of the World Hockey Association. I'm for getting a league name but there was proof that a team could definitely try to last there. And so, a basketball and a hockey team were founded in Dorton Arena. I have an older episode on the Raleigh Bullfrogs which is the basketball team. It lasted like one year. So, we'll focus more on the other the hockey team, the Ice Caps. The hockey team had so much more backing into it. You know, not having to compete again with basketball in NC State, Duke, unc.

13:45
Logan Brumley
There was no real competition. So, owners, the Durham Bulls owners were the big pieces to back in it with Miles Wolff and Pete Back. Those two were very instrumental in the development of this team from just being another minor league hockey team to one that had a lot of drive and a lot of push into it that just made it feel like it belonged way more than most of these older ones feel like. And they're also not the only North Carolina hockey team at this time. There was the second iteration of the Charlotte Checkers. The third one comes in a little bit down the road. But Dice Caps and Raleigh, they had a lot of attendant success around like 5k attendance in game, which was pretty high mark for a. I think it's for like the double A version of hockey.

14:46
Logan Brumley
They didn't have much postseason success. They were kind of struggling to get some wins in. That might be something I do a deeper dive on, you know, maybe in the future. That's been something I kind of like been soft launching in my head. But regardless, crowds would pour in every night to just see all these prospects play. It became a big part of culture in Raleigh, especially if you're nearby Dorton arena. There's a lot of, you know, promotions. Advertisement Just kind of ran like a minor league baseball team with the help of the owners who helped build the Durham Bowlers into the brand that is now they were doing the same Dice Caps and it just made so much potential for the Hurricanes, especially with a certain stadium being built near NC State campus that was originally meant for Wolfpack Hoops.

15:41
Logan Brumley
However, there was a potential, especially when you meet the Hartford Whalers in 1994, the NHL team, the Hartford Whalers, who was part of that competitive hockey league with Houston. Early on they got a new owner and Pete Kramnos, I think I'm pronouncing it right. Hold on a second. All right, Pete Kramnos, he was brought in a more of a rough period for the Hartford Whalers. They had one of the lowest NHL attendances in a long while and had missed back-to-back postseason. So, this was the team that had a really successful late 80s, early 90s run but was starting to kind of lose their shine.

16:30
Logan Brumley
And it was something that was starting to be seen as concerning so concerning fact that Kramnos had to come in and basically be given a lot of optimism and a lot of hope that the team can stay in Hartford and in Connecticut. However, a lot of these owners say things, and they don't really mean it. There was definitely an issue on the financial part of trying to afford to be there in Hartford and there was especially the big issue of this is like a really big criticism of Karmanos, especially over in Connecticut is that it was one of those classic situations of owner wants a new stadium with taxpayer money, but the taxpayers didn't really want to do that.

17:19
Logan Brumley
Which is weird because the governor Connecticut at the time was a shareholder in the Same company that Crown Nose got his money to buy the Hartford Whalers from. So I'll kind of leave that there. But you know, Kramnos, he did sort of have one foot out the door. He was very stingy on what he allowed in terms of season tickets. They originally had like 5 to 10, 15 game packages for, you know, fans who couldn't really afford a season ticket but wanted to go to a lot of games. He cut those out to just being single or full. And he was like, if I don't have 11k full season tickets, no matter how expensive I make them, he was gonna be like, I'm moving a team. And he got what he wanted. But the real occasion talk to have happened.

18:20
Logan Brumley
It's like it just could not work logistically and financially from what I can tell, or at least just not to the way that Kramnos was wanting. And there was sort of a mini competition with the relocation. It felt like Raleigh, North Carolina was a very strong competitor. Early on. North Carolina came a really strong contender, largely thanks to the stadium that was being built, which I think is now the Lenovo Arena. I keep calling it PNC still. I don't know if I'm the only one who does that. But anyways, the whole Save the Whales campaign with the Whalers and trying to get the tickets in and try to get the money in for this, for whatever. Rebuilding whatever stadiums Kremlin's wanted wasn't working. Columbus also had a sort of stadium in process as well.

19:27
Logan Brumley
But the NHL was like, you have the Raleigh and then we're going to try to give Columbus their own expansion team, which became the Columbus Blue Jackets in 2000. So that's just kind of how it happened. Raleigh was able to get theirs pretty easily. After the opportunity came up, it was like they almost pounced on it immediately and was just accepted into the cultural zeitgeist of North Carolina. However, it did start off pretty rocky. They had to deal with staying at Greensboro for a bit while the other stadium in Raleigh was being built. And there wasn't really a lot of attendance there. It was like 8k in the 21k size stadium. It was so bad that I've heard stories, so it's like they had to shut off part of it to make it look more full than it actually was.

20:32
Logan Brumley
However, once they got to RBC Arena 1999, that was it. Attendance shot up to 15k a game and the team started to improve in quality as well. Going with a bigger kind of rebuild to eventually reach a Stanley Cup. I think like twice in three years where they lost that mid 10 one against. I'm trying to remember who they beat to get their first Stanley Cup. They beat the Canadiens. Wait, wait. Oh, that's the first round, 2006. Hey, isn't that a coincidence. Okay, yeah, the Oilers beat the Oilers, played them twice. Okay, now what the fudge, okay, was 4-1 to the Red Wings in 2002 and then one in 2006. I don't know how I got the information, messed up in my head. But they beat Edmonton, was the Detroit, things were set in stone and now they have their second Stanley Cup.

21:47
Logan Brumley
You know, they beat the Vegas in six, which is really fun series. It was a great Stanley cup series. And I don't think the Hurricanes are going anywhere. And I think that Raleigh has become in part synonymous with the Hurricanes and you know, grateful to have the team and have all the success that's been provided and you know, here's to many more years like this. All right, so I think that wraps it up. I'll go into a little bit of track and feedback field stuff as well. You know, over the weekend the track and field national championship did wrap up and NC State finished 29th in the country, which was about where they were expected. They finished in the regular season, I think ranked 27th at their start in the season, ranked 30th. So not a major surprise.

22:48
Logan Brumley
It's, you know, just kind of a lot of usual where it's the strength and the female long-distance running. You know, you had Engelhardt, the freshman who finished 11th and the 1500 meters, got Hannah Gapes who also finished 11th in 5000. Bethany Michelak, sophomore, finished 17th. And then we almost have podium finishes with the 3000-meter steeple. You had Angelina Napoleon who finished in fourth with her personal best at nine and a half minutes additional six seconds and Kate Putman, a sophomore who finished in sixth. Napoleon [and] Putman were first team all Americans in the 3000 meters. And Engelhardt and Gapes finished in second team all American. And shout out to Ryan John, the senior in the triple jump who also managed to qualify for the national championships, although he did finish 22nd. Regardless, he qualified.

23:57
Logan Brumley
It's really good for NC State track and field to have more nonfemale cross country athletics in track and field. I know that a lot of these athletes do play some track and field, either primarily or secondhandedly and I just don't mind that was the result that we've gotten from it, you know, and in the conference in the region they're not a bad team either. I just think for some reason that Southeast does not pull in a lot. They're third in the Southeast like regional rankings behind Clemson and South Carolina. NEFA finished second in the conference in rankings behind Clemson sure maybe in the overall ACC outdoor championships they did not do so well. I think they finished 12th and women 8th and men but you know the rankings are the rankings and hopefully in the next year things will look better.

25:08
Logan Brumley
But anyways I think that will conclude today's episode. Sorry it was kind of a short one but you know that's what we have for today. Hope you enjoyed just getting a little bit of knowledge on hockey history. What's our next episode looking like? Looks like for the next episode we're going to be going over some dual athletes in NC State history and talking a little bit of the transfer portal as well. So that's about it. Hope you have a good day and go pack.

Transcribed by https://fireflies.ai/